Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“These hands aren’t the hands of a gentleman; These hands are calloused and old—Bob Dylan
A funny thing happened after I had my hand surgery a few years ago. Photographers from all around the world, some of which I didn’t even know, contacted me with stories about their own hand surgeries. Up until that time, I had never met anyone else who had surgery on their hands but here were several guys— and they were all men—with stories similar to mine, some with much more serious surgeries than my own. What was the thing that they all had in common? Photography. This, interestingly was one of the topics of a conversation I had recently with one of my doctors.
All of which brings me to a soapbox that I’ve been on for the past several years that relates to the size and weight of modern DSLRs and even some mirrorless cameras.
A Hasselblad 500C/M body weighs 1.3 pounds, yet back in the film days when Mary was photographing weddings with these cameras she developed a ganglion cyst on her right hand. Ganglion cysts can be painful—and it was—if they press on a nearby nerve and sometimes affect joint movement. It took a long time for this to heal and she ultimately stopped using Hasselblads because of the pain. These days, the Nikon flagship D6 weighs 2.79 lbs, while their mirrorless Z9, which theoretically should be lighter, is 2.9 lbs! And Nikon 105mm f/1.4E ED lens weighs 2.17 lbs by itself. Yet, we expect our hand and bodies to handle the weight of these cameras and lenses.
I have a friend who’s an extremely talented portrait photographer who tells me that the size and weight of modern DSLRs and lenses aren’t a problem for him because he always shoots on a tripod. Yet that camera has to put itself into and out of a camera bag, mount itself onto that tripod and get carried in some kind of case. Plus you have to bring a tripod, no matter how light (carbon fiber?) it may be. All that extra weight has to add up. As I once tried to explain to another, very famous photographer about a similar topic, ignoring a reality doesn’t make it less true.
Size, as they say, does matter. And this, my friends, is the main reason I was attracted to the Micro Four-thirds system that Mark Toal introduced me to ten years ago at the launch of the Panasonic Lumix G5 in Sonoma Raceway. As a point of reference, Panasonic’s current top-of-the-line Lumix GH6 body weighs 1.8 lbs. To be fair, their full-frame—not MFT—Lumix S1 tips the scales at 2.25 lbs. The other aspect that attracted my attention to the Micro Four-thirds system was the wide variety of lenses are available from Olympus, Panasonic as well as third-party lens companies. This combination has proven irresistible to me and, to be honest, I still maintain a limited Canon EOS full-frame and APS system. It’s theoretically “reserved only for projects that specifically require it” but in truth the cameras and lenses haven’t been been used since April, 2014. (Thanks EXIF data.)
As write this post, I just wanted to toss out the idea that big, heavy cameras won’t make you any more creative. Are they detrimental to your health? I don’t know and if you think I’m full of hoo-ha, that’s okay. This has never been a my way or the highway blog and I respect your decision about using whatever kind and weight of camera you prefer; ultimately it’s your choice because this blog’s motto has always been “have fun with your photography.”
For the story behind the above image, Las Manos de la Hermandad, click here.